The importance of events as an integral part of a marketing campaign is hard to deny: they can drive leads for sales, help you establish professional partnerships and create a personal connection with audiences and clients. The difficult part is justifying the associated expenses and measuring the event effectiveness. It is paramount to come up with a reliable set of metrics, in order to measure the event effectiveness and determine whether it is valuable or not.
Currently, the most popular metrics for measuring the return on investment of events have something to do with social media and the amount of exposure generated. The reason is simple: social media platforms have become ubiquitous, and they can be easily used at any stage of the process. Pre-event buzz allows you to do last-minute adjustments, while post-event comments are very good for optimizing your future events and solidifying your newly established relationships with partners and clients. Additionally, you can monitor social media engagement as the event is happening, to get a real-time feedback and instant indication of success.
Of course, more traditional methods, such as market surveys, still have their important place as reliable tools for measuring the event effectiveness. To make surveys as effective as possible, you should clearly define your main objectives and gather pre-event comparison data. Our event management software can help you effortlessly build engaging surveys, send them to attendees, and generate easy-to-understand reports.
Always keep an eye on hard data, including your sales growth, revenue, and total attendance. While these may not reliably tell you the whole story when looked at in isolation, they are very important pieces of a large puzzle. Your job is to put all these pieces together and observe the clear final picture they will present to you.